Empty Tomorrow
by ER-Trovia
Summary: Ray Barnett was about the last person Abby had expected to call. Gen. Post ep. 14x6: "The Test" - themes of suicide and alcoholism.


Hello, people from far and not so far away! I have come back to my place of origin to post some ER fic. One ER fic, at that. We'll have to see about more in the future. I hope you'll all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :-)

**Warnings: **This was written for the prompt "suicide attempt" over at hurt/comfort bingo on Livejournal, so feel warned about that as well as talk of alcoholism, as this is set roughly post episode 14x6: "The Test" - when Abby was falling off the wagon.

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><p><strong>Empty Tomorrow<strong>

Ray Barnett was just about the last person Abby had expected to call.

"Ray!" She managed not to knock the whiskey glass off the table when she stumbled on her way back to the couch. "Uhm, hi. Hi. I didn't... Is everything..." She pressed her eyes together, shook her head and tried again. "Stupid question." She took a breath. "How are you doing?"

His voice sounded distant, just as far away as he was - Louisiana, her brain supplied after a moment, Baton Rouge in Louisiana.

The Barnett she remembered would have chuckled and asked if she missed him already.

This one said, "I'm..." and paused and settled on, "...still there, I guess." And added, "How are you?"

"I'm fine." _Fine and everything is great and I'm not drunk._ "I'm fine," she repeated more firmly.

At the other end of the line, Ray cleared his voice. "Sorry... sorry to bother you at this hour," he said hoarsely. "I didn't... This guy from psych kept saying I should talk to someone familiar and I didn't... I just wanted to check in... God, this was a stupid idea," he muttered.

"No, no, it's not," she hurried to say. _Breathe deeply. Be sober. Focus._ "I'm glad that you called. Are you sure that everything is alright?"

There was an agonizing moment of silence after that one.

Another one for whom nothing was right anymore.

_I'm a drunk. You're an amputee. Who wins?_

"Hey, you know what," Ray said with forced cheer. _He's gone through major trauma. Of course he sounds weird._ "Turns out I'm over my fear of needles. Turns out, you can get over it if you give yourself a Vicodin injection to..."

His voice trailed off, as if it had been supposed to be a joke until he noticed that he'd forgotten why it was funny.

Listening to Ray breathing in a somewhat shallow way, Abby stared at the bottle on the table. Half full, she thought, half empty. It seemed a profound observation after a couple of glasses of whiskey. The bottle would get empty tonight, or if it wouldn't, the binging would follow tomorrow or the day after that. No reason to hold back now that she'd already started, really. It would happen. Who was she kidding? There wasn't such a thing as just one more drink.

"They put you on Vicodin?" she asked when the silence started stretching.

Why had he called her again?

Ray chuckled, a little hysterical. _He's high,_ she thought, but no, that didn't quite feel right for Barnett - he wasn't the type, he was the type who started at sixteen or never. "So to say."

"I had a row with Moretti today," she said, because her brain was working, working, keeping everything running, and she had to say something. Maybe Ray had called for idle chat. "God, he's such an idiot. I don't think you'd have gotten along with him. He sort of reminds me of Clemente, except not in that sociopathic way that made you hope he'd have a break soon and be gone."

A pause. "Who's Moretti?"

Gah, right. She knocked her fist against her head a couple of times to clear it. _Think, Abby._ "Right. Sorry. Chief of the ER." The smirk was automatic. "There's a new sheriff in town."

"Sounds like I left right in time to miss all the fun."

"Didn't you always."

There wasn't the expected chuckle. That was strange, Abby thought through the mist in her head, because she'd thought she'd gotten to know Ray better than that in those three years. He shouldn't be sounding so... so weird. Something was nagging at her, something about the whole call and the whole conversation, but she couldn't pinpoint what it was.

There had to be a lot of other people that he could have called.

"How is rehab working out for you?" she made another attempt to keep the conversation going, because that's what you were supposed to do, and it was _nice_ that he had called. "It's been... what? God, time flies," she muttered, trying to remember what date it was today and what date he'd had his accident - after her wedding, why couldn't she remember the date of her wedding? Why the hell _should_ she remember her wedding if Luka had _left_?

Ray's voice sounded too soft. "Two months. It's been two months."

"So you're living with your mom..."

"I'm at the hospital right now."

"Right, you'd have to go back for..." _But not yet._

"Let's not talk about that." She heard him take a breath, deep and labored, one that you'd take note of at work in the ER, patients curled into themselves in their beds. "Tell me more things that I've missed. How's life treating an R4 at County?"

It was impossible not to hear what he didn't say and ask, even for her in this state. There was a name entirely missing from the conversation, although it was Ray and it was Neela, had always been Neela - towards the end there, it had been damn hard not to pity him. Now though, she was staring at the bottle of liquor and the glass next to it - half empty - and what use was there in not drinking more today?

But she still didn't reach for the glass, hearing words come out of her mouth.

It wasn't, "Luka went to Croatia and left me with Joe and I'm scared" because they weren't that kind of friends, had never been - it was none of Ray's business and Abby had never had words for that kind of issue.

She didn't say, "I'm pretty sure he won't come back because, why the hell should he?" and she sure as hell didn't say, "There's a whiskey bottle standing in front of me and did I ever mention how I'm a recovering drunk? Except not so much recovering now."

She said: "Well, we had this kid with a dislocated shoulder in trauma today and Morris swore he'd treated her before for something else. But she was out of it, so one of the med students started looking for the file..."

A guy from psych. A psychiatrist had told him to get in touch with someone familiar. Why would they be consulting psych for a skin craft? Or was he seeing his therapist at the hospital? Why would he call his therapist _that guy from psych_?

Wouldn't it be too early for a skin craft?

Maybe Ray just needed to hear a voice from Chicago that wasn't Neela's.

Maybe.

"Also, we have a new coffee machine in the lounge," she said. "Chlamydia guy donated it after Morris convinced him that he'd saved his life. Italian espresso thing."

"So you're getting high on espresso now all shift?"

"Like we weren't doing that before?"

"I guess the walks to the kiosk through the cold woke us up, huh?"

He sounded strangely wistful in a hesitant way, as if he was just feeling out the notion. Of course, it was all in the past for him, in a way that felt just as foreign to Abby. Permanently removed from their lives. And Ray knew that, too, she could hear. It was all over for him. It was... sad.

"We're missing you here, you know that, right?" she asked, crooking her head and playing with a strand of her hair.

"It's mutual," Ray said softly.

Then she said, "If you ever want to call again..." and he said, "Listen, they're gonna be checking on me in five minutes..." and after a moment, she'd sorted the word order out in her head and said, "Yes. Sure. I shouldn't keep you up." She took a deep breath. "It was nice talking to you, Ray."

"Call me if you ever need to, you know," he said, and stopped abruptly.

She tensed. "What do you mean?"

"Just." He said it in a unsure voice. "You sound a little down."

_So even a damn recent amputee on Vicodin will notice now,_ she thought, angry at herself.

"I'm, I'm just tired," she announced. Also, she forced herself to take a deep breath. "Thank you," she added clearly, because she _would_ appreciate the sentiment if it hadn't made her so nervous. "Same goes for you. You can call me whenever."

"Thanks," he said and, "'Night," and she also said "Good night," and his voice was replaced by the dial tone, leaving her alone in the apartment yet again.

Abby noticed the whiskey bottle sitting on the table.

She'd forgotten it was there for a moment.

Time trickled by.

_Luka,_ she thought. _Luka. Liquor. Ray, Moretti. Neela._ She'd been missing Elizabeth Corday those past few days, strangely, who'd never been as preoccupied with herself the way Neela had been since her accident, even when tragedy had struck. What was it with County employment and terrible fates?

Not for Abby, of course. Her fate was okay. She was just an alcoholic with half a bottle of whiskey and a little boy who might wake up and start crying while she was drunk.

Guy from psych. She shook her head. Guy from psych.

_"If you give yourself a Vicodin injection..."_

It had been strangely comforting to talk to Ray, she thought. She and Ray, they hadn't exactly hit it off in the beginning, but you grew close if you spent so many shifts together. So many patients to see, and no clue what to do with them in that first year. Not close enough for him to call once he'd left, Abby had thought, but it was nice to be wrong.

It was nice that he had called her to get news from home. She could do news from home. Learning he liked her enough to reach out. It had been... grounding.

_"If you give yourself a Vicodin injection to..."_

They really shouldn't let him do that himself at that place.

_Have to make sure that Joe is asleep,_ she thought and she stood up, and didn't sway, almost.

The whiskey bottle kept burning into her back, but it stayed in her back, was the thing, and then it was one room away from her and then two. She'd do it tomorrow, she knew. Another day was another day was another day. And if Pratt asked her again if anything was wrong, she'd probably say no. But maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd say yes.

**Fin.**


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